Category: General Computing

Free Practice Placement Database Software that can be used by Universities is often where we start at inPractice. Often a Practice Placement Team are looking for something simple to help them without a large investment. Alternatively a Practice Educator wants to trial a Practice Placement Database or Placement Software Tool first.

inPractice.org is able to help with both of these approaches with our free version of Placement Center.

Freeplace – View an entire cohort in one viewView Student’s entire practice placement history and feedback forms on one single page

inPractice was formed in 2004 when we were invited to re-imagine an All Wales communication platform for Cardiff University’s Healthcare courses which connected NHS organisations across Wales. Our innovate model was quickly copied by Universities across Ireland, Scotland and even as far as Australia.

Since then inPractice has designed, developed and delivered innovation into the U.K.’s most successful Universities and organisations.

Node-Red A visual tool for wiring the Internet of Things is a fantastic web-based app that is perfect for helping children do something with their Raspberry Pi – actually, it’s perfect for helping anyone do something with their Raspberry Pi!

Node-Red A visual tool for wiring the Internet of Things

As it’s built on node-js, a Javascript based server environment for running cross-platform applications, it’s incredibly simple to install and get running (it’s honestly just a few commands and it’s running.

From there, it’s as easy as dragging nodes on a page and wiring them up. For example, you could use it to quickly and easily set up a light sensor on your GPIO which then sends a tweet when it’s getting dark.

Anyway, you get the idea, have a look over at the node-red site for more info:

If you run a weblog chances are you’re among the 70% of them that are running WordPress. If you are you’re more than likely seeing various attempts on your security, perhaps DOS as a result of exploit attempts on xmlrpc.php so I highly recommend reading this article on Fail2ban.

Fail2ban is a great utility that allows you to set up monitoring of log files and filter them according to very specific rules. For example, you can specify a filter to watch Apache web logs for requests using https and ban, i.e. prevent them from accessing your server for a period of time,based on the number of requests made in a certain time period.

I’m writing an overview of Code for a project and thought I’d see if you can query GitHub at a meta-data level. Turns out you sure can 🙂 Check out the GitHub Archive over here http://www.githubarchive.org/

2.2 configuration:

2.4 configuration:

PHP is also upgraded to version 5.5.9 (cli) (built: May 10 2014 21:37:28). I’ve not encountered any major issue there yet but it’s worth reading upgrade pages on that too. Here’s the PHP page on the changes and compatibility issues.

There’s a few exciting announcements to come from inPractice, the first is a free guide to the new curriculum for teachers that I’ve decided to release as an open-source document (on github) via the creative commons license. I’d love it to be collaborative and multi-lingual so if you’d like to pitch in, fork the code and get in touch 🙂

It’s written for teachers and anyone wanting to know a bit more about the concepts in the curriculum. It will contain interactive examples plus the Craft Computer resources with full instructions.

It’s in progress now, but in the spirit of Agile development, you can read what’s there now or download and contribute if you’d like – click the image.

The next announcement will be about the physical computing product we’re working on which is called: parc.io. More on that soon!

The central processing unit lies at the heart of every computer, a vast collection of microscopically small switches and logic-gates. Now, through the power of paper we bring you those same logic gates in goat form.
Presented here are the:

The and-goat will nod his head only in you press the right button AND the left button.

The or-goat nods his head if you press the left button OR the right button OR both buttons.

The not-goat nods his head if you are NOT pressing the button.

The xor-goat (Exclusive OR) nods if you press one button OR the other button but not if you press both.

Throughout the Kickstarter campaign I’ve been using it as an opportunity to reach out to parents and get their opinion on the new Computing curriculum and general drive to push it into schools.

I had a great email from an old school friend who’s not technical and reflects the general consensus I’ve found quite well:

Hi Dan

It’s essential that children are given the opportunity and access not just to learn about computers and coding but to really understand it. If my daughter is being taught maths so that the methods and numbers are unpicked and she understands why numbers work they way they do so she can apply that understanding with any set of numbers then surely the same benefits apply when it comes to computers/coding.

I am concerned that even though computers/technology touch nearly every aspect of our lives there is still a ‘mystique’ about them or coding is seen as a ‘dark art’ it must be mainstreamed in education if we are to encourage our kids to learn and be turned on to the possibilities to then go on to choosing a career path that sees them create the next generate of technology or use their knowledge in engineering, science or research (areas that need a boost of entrants). My son has just started secondary school having only had a limited experience of working with code and it frustrates me to think that this may continue.

Even if your kids are lucky enough to go to an extremely well resourced school their experience and exposure to computers and coding depends entirely on how adept the teacher is with it. Even then I’m willing to bet that its ‘surface’ learning rather than a deeper understanding. Too often lack of resources is used as an excuse for not exposing the children to this kind of stuff at all which makes practical solutions such as yours a total win:win.

I want my children to ask why? when they are being taught, and get past the surface learning that provides limited value and does not give them the tools to learn and acquire knowledge and skills as they move through their school years. Using outside of the box methods to teach them a different perspective on such a critical part of their lives & futures should surely be the top of the list.

I hope this isn’t too ‘soap box’ but its something I feel very strongly about.

Ok, so there is entrepreneurial motive behind Year of Code which has precedent for a more market focused goal. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing – if handled with empathy toward the initial trail blazers. Competition allied to good causes can affect change quickly. In this case, it’s to provide materials that allow a young generation to exploit the incredible technology they have, literally in their hands. For my part, that’s a good thing.

I wanted to post some additional info on Year Of Code for two reasons.

We were nerding out over languages and elegance – I know, engineers are a riot right! – and the topic turned to Apple’s HyperCard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperCard). HyperCard, as I’ve written a few times, holds a special place in my development history. It’s also a bit of a shibboleth within software engineering. Turns out Dan was the last engineer manager on Apple’s Hypercard and he also tried to give it a new lease of life when he was at Google:

HyperCard is an important milestone in Computing languages as it’s one of a few that understood and communicated a clear and relevant ‘metaphor’ through which the user intuitively understood how to interact with it. Something that ‘straight’ languages suffer from. It’s set in a clearly defined context and it’s obvious. Look at some PHP code and it might not be obvious what’s happening – btw, I like PHP a lot!

For me, the fact that Dan was part of that historic project bodes well for the Year of Code team. They have substance behind the PR and if ‘code’ is the poster child that brings Computational Thinking back into the bedrooms of children again, I’m all for it.